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Category Archive: Tips

One look at the computer keyboard in front of you and you see a row of keys at the top of the keyboard labelled F1 through F12. You must have often wondered what the use of these keys are. Read on for rundown on these keys and what they can do for youThe keys labelled F1 through F12 are referred to as the function keys. While you do not need these keys to perform your everyday activities, they do provide some interesting shortcuts which can be a valuable asset for everyday computing ease. These function keys are usually used in combination with keys such as the CTRL key, the ALT key and the Shift key.

F1

F1 key usually serves as a shortcut for the help menu. If you press F1 while working in a program, help for that program will usually appear. If you press F1 while at the Windows desktop or when the Windows Explorer is open, a Windows help screen will pop up. If you happen to be working in a program and would like to see the Windows help screen, simply press the Windows key (the key with the Windows logo on the bottom row of keys) on your keyboard and press F1 at the same time.

F2

In this tutorial, we are going to hack a Coke vending machine. While these machines might look dumb from the outside, underneath is a very simple Operating System on which it runs and we are going to try to hack into this to gain access to a debug menu and gain access to all sorts of information. This is something that almost no one ever notices, every coke machine with a LED screen is hackable. You can find out cool stuff like how much money is in the machine, how many times one soda has been bought, etc.Which machines work?
We are looking for COCA – COLA product vending machines, which means the picture outside the vending machine would be showing either Coke or Dasani or Vanilla Coke or Sprite or Fanta among other Coke pridcuts. Also the machine must have a LED screen which displays some sort of a scrolling text. Usually in most college campuses, they would be set to “Please swipe your card” or “Select your product”

Steps

Find a Coke machine that has an LED screen.

Push the following buttons in the order given 4, 2, 3, 1.

If the buttons are in a column the first button is the top one.

If they are in a grid or other format, the first button is usually the top left one.

Most of us have iPods for our music players and when we want to play music from the convenience of our own computers whether it is a Laptop or a Desktop, iTunes is a preferred method over say WinAmp or Windows Media Player for the wide range of features it provides. I am sure a lot of you out there have been in a situation where you are busy working on your latest assignment or pounding away lines of code and you want to change the song that is being played right now. Now, it is such a major distraction for one to open up iTunes as the current active window and then change the song being played from there. Well, today we are going to change that age old method of using your iTunes and instead work out from the toolbar itself.By adopting this method, you get skip , play , pause songs as well as increase/decrease the current volume. Check it out…